Living A Dream
by Cynthia of the Wallflowers
Summary: Lily has a dream. It's a good dream, full of magic and an adventure, but she wakes up in her warm, safe bed, eleven years old again and magic-less, and cries anyway.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter or anything in it.

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**General Warnings:** AU, GEN for now, language, time travel of a sort I guess

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**Summary:** Lily has a dream. It's a good dream, full of magic and an adventure, but she wakes up in her warm, safe bed, eleven years old again and magic-less, and cries anyway.

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**Author's Notes:** This...wasn't planned. I don't think I'm even planning to continue this. (I might though, depending on the reception.) It was just something that wouldn't leave me alone.

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**Living A Dream**

Lily has a dream.

It's a good dream, all things considered. There's magic and a school in a magnificent castle named Hogwarts. It's a great adventure, and she gets to live her entire life in the dream.

She dreams of meeting a handsome, cocky, hazel-eyed boy on their first train ride and disliking him almost on sight, their arguments quickly becoming stuff of the legends in the Gryffindor tower.

She dreams of his, frankly, pathetic attempts to flirt as they grow older, but blushing in her dorm later that night anyway and hating herself for it. She dreams of falling for him and marrying him, and his rambunctious friends setting off fireworks in the wedding tent and nearly blowing them all up. She dreams of her beautiful baby boy with his father's messy black hair and her own bright green eyes, a natural with a broom and already giving her coronaries at the age of one with his antics.

She dreams of the war. She dreams of dying.

It's not a bad dream, all things considered. Even dying at the hands of the pale-faced snake-man that terrifies her almost beyond words isn't too bad because she dies happy, knowing her baby boy will survive.

But she wakes up in her warm, safe bed, eleven years old again and magic-less, and cries anyway. Her choking sobs are mixed with hiccuping laughter _(it was such a good dream)_. She wishes she hadn't woken up.

Her parents, her mundane, muggle parents, who are alive again and unscarred, unscathed, are at loss for what to do. Hot chocolate does nothing but remind her of those warm nights in front of the Gryffindor common room's fireplace, giggling with her friends and roasting marshmallows and fending off the boys. Hugs remind her of James Potter, and her mother's worried, green eyes remind her of her Harry, her beautiful baby boy.

_(You die in a Death Eater attack, she wants to tell her. They rape you in front of Dad before they torture Dad to death and it takes hours, but I never even know until Petunia finds your mangled bodies in the ruins of your house and calls me in the communication mirror I gave her, the first and last time she used something magical of her own free will...)_

She stops crying, stops laughing, but she stops sleeping as well.

Her parents send her to a psychologist. She sits and refuses to talk, and when she gets home she refuses to eat until her parents capitulate and pull her out. She is glad. She knows a psychologist wouldn't understand. How can you understand when someone says that they've lived their life in a dream?

_(James's smile and his warm hugs, Harry's cooing and bright laughter, Sirius' bark and Remus' chuckle, how do you say that you can still feel them and hear them, __how can you tell someone that it felt so real?__)_

She still can't sleep. Even Petunia is worried now.

_(You hate me, she wants to tell her. Because it's my fault Mum and Dad die. If I had never gotten caught up in the stupid war, if I had taken proper precautions to hide all of you, if I had never so carelessly mentioned where I lived, maybe they would have survived, maybe you wouldn't have had to leave to keep your own baby boy safe, maybe, maybe, maybe...)_

She still can't sleep, she _can't_ (because what if she has that dream again, she doesn't think she could take it again, that wonderful, _awful_ dream).

And then she gets the letter.

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You can probably tell I'm pretty much tossing everything canon has on Lily Evans Potter into a blender until it's nearly unrecognizable, or just tossing it out altogether. Like Lily and Severus' friendship. I can't write Snape for the life of me, much less Snape being nice, so I dumped it. Maybe I'll include him again in the future, I don't know.

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**Please review!**


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